My eyes skip that way. I let out a groan. The Shor brothers are sitting at the corner table. Farian’s made his way over to them, but the conversation looks like it’s going nowhere fast.
“Very subtle, Mother.”
“What?” she asks, all innocence. “They’re nice boys.”
I give her a scathing look, take a final bite of cake, and start making my way around the room. Like most Dividian birthdays, it’s a great smash of bodies and sound. I’m toasted by some and trapped by others. At one point my little cousin Elna finds her way into my arms. I set her against a hip, spinning her with me to each new conversation. She’s a warm little thing, and she keeps asking me when the dreamnots will be released. Uncle Briel toasts my video, and his two gangly sons launch a hundred questions in my direction. I’m thankful when Aunt Ismay pulls me to a new conversation.
By the time everyone’s seated and eating, I’m starving. One of the Shor brothers tries to say hello, but I answer him with a mouthful of roasted quail. He smiles his way politely back to the corner table, which has Mother fuming. Father sits back, though, sipping his drink and laughing at me. Some of the girls my age already have matches lined up. They’ll be married in a few years, making babies in a few more. I’m not them. At least Father understands that truth.
When most of the plates have been picked clean, my uncles start clearing out tables in the main room of Amaya’s bar. They leave behind a great sprawling space for the dreamnots.
Prosper rushes over to join a handful of my younger cousins. All the girls wait in colorful dresses. The boys adjust their little neck scarves. Catching dreamnots is an old Dividian tradition. They’re one of the few creatures our ancestors brought to this land on that first voyage, and the only breed that didn’t die out in the brutal wilds of the Empire. So much of our culture—our dances and our songs—died the same way.
The Ashlords even took our names from us. The joke goes that—after the war—the Ashlord census takers were too lazy to write down our full names. Our braver history teachers whisper the truth, though. Reducing all of our surnames to four letters—Beru and Rahm and Shor—was a reminder of who was in power and of how much we still had to lose.
So I smile wide as my father stands to begin one of the few traditions they couldn’t destroy. The whole room falls quiet. He’s not particularly big, but he’s still the kind of man everyone notices. He walks across the room, and all the children take up eager stances. It’s not hard to remember when I was that little, how much I looked forward to trying to catch the dreamnot with my friends and cousins.
The children see the twinkle in Father’s eye as he stops before the door to Amaya’s supply closet. He smiles back at them and sets his hand on the knob. The door rattles loudly and I laugh, knowing Father’s just making noise to rile them up. The children in the front row take a cautious step back, eyes wild and excited. He opens the door and a herd of gray-blue creatures comes stampeding forward, each of them about the size of a teacup.
Farian always called them baby wolves with wings, and it’s not a bad description. The children scream with delight. One of the creatures takes flight, scrambling to get clear of swatting hands. Another set sprint off to the right, the fur along their backs bristling. Prosper’s the first to catch one and the first to draw out the true nature of dreamnots.
When he snatches it by the leg, the creature vanishes instantly into mist.
Laughing, he chases after the next.
One by one, the little creatures start to disappear. But this is the fun. Only one of the dreamnots in the room is actually the real one. Tradition says that the child who catches it gets to make a wish. I laugh as little Elna pins one, tickling its belly until it laughs into nonexistence. The other cousins start teaming up, eliminating the illusions until there are only a handful of dreamnots left in the room. It’s my favorite kind of chaos.
Prosper ends the game with a lunging grab. He rolls onto his back, clutching the creature to his chest, and lets out a scream when it doesn’t disappear. The dreamnot squirms at first before resigning itself to being captured. After all, the creature knows what Prosper does: His wish will not come true unless he sets it free again. The uncles begin chanting for him to make his wish and the other children shout out their own ideas.
The scene is so loud and bright and perfect, that it takes a long minute for anyone to notice the figure standing at the door. A portion of the room quiets, until silence has dug its cold claws through all of us. The laughing children back away uncertainly.
I’m one of the last to see the Ashlord standing at Amaya’s front entrance.
Oxanos is a tall man, absurdly slender. His skin is characteristically polished, his eyes lightless pools. Like most of our overlords, he seems genetically predisposed to pride. It’s in his chin, his shoulders, his hands. This is a man who is certain he is superior to everyone else in the room. Unlike most of his kind, Oxanos has little reason to be proud.
The Ashlords assigned him as an overseer of our village. They wrapped the whole thing with a neat bow, but it wasn’t hard to figure out that sending Oxanos here was meant to be a punishment. He knows that and we know that. It makes him a cruel man, and even if some of our cousins don’t know him personally, none are foolish enough to think he’s welcome here.
Nor are any foolish enough to stop him from entering.
“A birthday?” he asks in his rich, city-born accent. “That’s the cause of all this noise?”
Amaya steps forward. “We’ll keep it quiet.”
“Too late for that,” Oxanos replies. “I’ve already been woken up twice by it.”
Amaya’s mouth opens again, but Oxanos cuts her off with a raised hand.
“Don’t bother arguing. You’ve broken rules here tonight. Noise ordinances. Crowd ordinances. I see alcoholic beverages in the hands of underage drinkers.” He pretends to scan the crowd, but his eyes inevitably fix on me. We are not strangers, nor are we friends. Like most of the girls in our town, I’ve had to suffer the leering attention that Oxanos considers a part of his charm. “Exotic creatures, too? Do we have permits for the use of these?”
No one answers, because no one in the room’s ever needed a permit for dreamnots, or to throw a party, or to make noise in a bar. I realize the idea of us waking up Oxanos is just as laughable. Amaya’s bar is on the west end of town, almost a mile away from his cozy quarters above town hall. I’d bet ten legions he was passing by and was bored enough to try feeling important.
The rule of the Ashlords is unquestioned. We know better than to complain about our lives to them. They’ve never looked on us with mercy, but to see Oxanos trying to take these small joys builds fury in me like fire. I’m not alone. Half the room looks ready to breathe smoke.